Neil Katz Editor-in-Chief and VP of Content, The Weather Company Neil Katz serves as editor-in-chief and vice president of content for The Weather Company’s digital properties, which include weather.com, wunderground.com, and its category-leading lineup of smartphone and tablet applications. Katz owns editorial direction of the properties overseeing digital video content, news, lifestyle and sponsored advertising content. He supervises all content staff as well as content acquisition and analytics. Katz joined The Weather Company in November 2012 from The Huffington Post, where as executive news editor he was part of the senior team that oversees editorial for The Huffington Post. He led the AOL.com editorial team and oversaw The Huffington Post business, tech and crime verticals, as well as the production of several new video series. Previously, Katz spent several years at CBSnews.com as an executive editor and was the founding editor of the CBS News Crimesider site. In addition, he was a field producer for “48 Hours,” and a freelance video journalist for The New York Times and PBS. Prior to his journalism career, Katz art directed online campaigns for clients including Intel, Cuervo, Johnson & Johnson and the American Lung Association. In addition, he founded Merging Media, a digital design firm that produced sites for Nickelodeon, Hasbro, NYU and others.

2. Future Forecast
How a 30-Year-Old TV
Company Got Obsessed with
Mobile

3. What do you know about
the Weather Company?
Nothing.

4. When I started here...
Me neither.

5. But this blew my mind

6. Three decades
before Smart
TVs, before
XBox, before the
Web, before
most folks had
email or cell
phones
I WAS COOL IN 1982

7. A small
company out
of Atlanta, Ga.,
pulled off an
amazing
technological
feat

9. This is technology?
Really?

10. Really
This is a national cable channel
delivering near real time forecasts to
every zip code in America.

11. Even Today
no other television company can
delivery unique news to your TV.
That’s why unlike the web, we all see
THE SAME newscasts each night.

12. Soon after
An enterprising engineer thought it
would be neat if Weather Channel
employees could have their email at
weather.com

13. Eventually
people started
searching
their local zip
code and
weather….
Boom!!

14. So by accident
weather.com was born and the
company is the dominant weather
news site on the web

16. Now 100 Million People
Read more than a billion pages each
month on our site

17. But we had
a problem
When it’s
sunny outside
people don’t
show up

18. So we
invested
heavily in
journalism,
video
production and
storytelling

19. Tripled our editorial staff
CBS News, Huff Post, Daily Beast,
Everyday Health, AOL, Audubon
Magazine

20. Went Big
on Photos
Original
photography
from more than
100 shooters
around the world
Andrew Newey
Beekeepers of Nepal

21. And
Built
a digital
video
production
unit and a
documentar
y unit

22. Today we
make
20 videos a day
on breaking
weather news,
travel, health,
science and
action sports

25. And will release
6 short docs this year

26. On topics you wouldn’t
think we could do
America Burning
Fracking and Toxic Air
Homeless in Coldest City in America
Climate Change Denial

29. Our digital unit is also
making TV
Two hours of Primetime called “Will to
Live”
Runs on TV, Web, Mobile

33. Good for you
but now everything is going mobile…

36. So what’s your next trick?
Reinvention

38. 40 Million People
use our apps each month
another 10 million on mobile web

39. formatted for
mobile
hiring editors
just for
Deliver
News &
Video

40. Go Long, Go Deep
Mobile doesn’t only mean short form

42. make it
easier than
web
vine is the
leader
Fast
Start
Video

43. Facebook
and Twitter
are driving
how we scan
mobile news.
News
Stream?

44. GPS locked severe
weather warnings
and breaking news.
What’s your version
of that?
Location Matters

45. We’re experimenting
with content that
relates to your location.
Will it be interesting,
timely, high quality? Do
you just want cat
videos?
But does it
always matter?

46. Are big
media
sites
daring
enough?
Old
School?

47. What can
the
upstarts
teach us?
New
School

48. Visual
content
up high +
super
social
New
School

49. Upworthy is
the king of
social.
Should
news sites
follow?
New
School

50. Upworthy is
the king of
social.
Should
news sites
follow?
New
School

51. Can a 15
second
newscast
really work?
http://instagram.com
/p/mLfcuHM95B/
New
School
Hasn’t radio been doing
this for a really long time?
PS: Instagram now
has more MAU than
Twitter
Back to School?